Hilarious.
Awkward Editorial Corrections: Whoreshoes in SF Chronicle October 14, 2008
Corrections can be funny. Such as this, extremely awkward one, about fellow all-lady San Francisco band the Whoreshoes.
I find it even more awkward that the editor then outed all the band members: “Only vocalist Lala Hulse is a lesbian.” The others, totally into dudes. Why do we have to know a band’s sexual orientation?
After 7.5 years, I’m canceling my Martha Stewart Living subscription September 16, 2008
I have every copy I’ve ever received and refer back to them often. I was a charter subscriber to Everyday Food and Blueprint. I’ve sent Martha Stewart flowers, bought Martha Stewart linens at Kmart, and own Martha Stewart cookware.
So why am I letting my subscription lapse? Here’s the email I just sent to their editors:
Hello–
I’ve been a subscriber to Martha Stewart Living since January 2001, but I’m letting my subscription lapse. Ever since Margaret Roach left as editor, all the fun has gone out of the magazine. My favorite issue, the October issue, didn’t even have a Halloween-themed cover last year. It sounds silly, but I love those covers. I start looking forward to them the minute I get my September issue. They epitomized what I loved about MSL — it’s a magazine about elaborate (and sometimes simple) domestic arts and beauties but it never took itself too seriously. There was always a fun, playful element. Similarly, whenever I got a new issue, I always skipped right ahead to the Good Things section. Now, the ideas there seem like they were created by someone trying to mock the idea of the magazine. They feel fussy and overly complex, and the aesthetic feels dated. In the past, Good Things were either beautiful little details or ways to make entertaining, etc. simpler. I loved them then.
The home designs remind me of the designs that were in the magazine when I first subscribed — only how those seven-year-old designs look to me now, not how they looked to me then. The articles are dry and dutiful. It feels like an old-lady magazine.
I’m an editor, and when I redesigned the last magazine I worked on, relaunching it as a service-oriented magazine, I borrowed heavily from the ideas in Martha Stewart (it was a guitar magazine, so the application was so different, no one probably would have noticed!). But even as an editor, I don’t find anything innovative or exciting about the publication. You used to have clever sidebars, and interesting ways of presenting and organizing the content. Now all the articles are long-form narratives, or long-form narratives plus recipe, or brief profile of family plus several recipes. It feels like the editorial team is bored.
Bring Margaret Roach back. Or Martha. Or someone else with a sense of fun. It’s really saddened me to see the sudden decline in quality of the magazine when Michael Boodro took over. After giving him a chance with his first few issues, I’d been toying with the idea of unsubscribing. When a glitch on your website prevented them from accepting my credit card when I tried to renew my own and my mom’s subscriptions, I decided it was fate.
Please tell the old team that I thank them so much for a great almost 8 years of your magazine. Those editors helped me cook better, entertain more, and enjoy the little beauties that you can create in your home. I miss that deeply. Letting my subscription lapse is like saying goodbye to an old friend once you realized you’ve drifted apart.
Eight years of blogging August 29, 2008
I just realized that I’ve been blogging for eight years now. Suck it, Mager. 
Now listening: “If I’m Gonna Sink, I Might as Well Go to the Bottom,” Johnny Paycheck.
Weirdest spelling of “Barbecue” I’ve ever seen August 28, 2008
I’ll give you barbecue, barbeque, and even BBQ, but this is unacceptable.
Bar-what-cue?
Taken on my vacation in Sea Isle City.
Typos and Murphry’s Law July 16, 2008
I loves me a good typo/editing story. Here’s the latest, from the Freakonomics blog: Pasties, Pasties Everywhere.
I have to respect Stephen Dubner for being so good natured about the whole mishap!
War of Words: “Irregardless” December 27, 2007
My friend Tim blogged a while back in defense of the word “irregardless.” I guess the folks at Merriam-Webster’s stumbled across it and blogged in their own defense in November.
This raises a few points:
- Why don’t people ever get sarcasm, hyperbole, or just plain goofy jokes on the Internet?
- Why did M-W quote from their usage guide instead of their much more common dictionary, which says basically the same thing? And did they miss Tim’s point 3?
- Why didn’t M-W use the word “irregardless” in the title of the post? Have they never heard of SEO? This is 2007, people.
Completely irrelevant P.S. My dad wanted a dictionary that “has all the words” for Christmas. I recommended M-W’s Collegiate 11th, but my mom bought the Random House Webster’s Unabridged. I was about to geek out on her about dictionaries, but decided it wasn’t in the spirit of Christmas to tell my 73-year-old Mom that maybe she should return a 30-lb. Christmas gift for a 30-lb. Christmas gift that looks exactly the same but is from a different publisher.
Oh, and that was the second unabridged dictionary given by and to a family member at Christmas.
Old News: Merriam-Webster’s Word of 2007 December 21, 2007
Really? w00t is Merriam-Webster’s word of 2007? Is it even a word if it has numbers instead of vowels? How old do I sound right now?
But before I get my red pencils in a twist, I have to consider the source. See, there are two basic philosophies when it comes to creating dictionaries, usage guidelines, etc. You can either be descriptive (you’re basically recording how people are currently using the language) or prescriptive (you’re basically making a determination about what’s right). Something like urbandictionary.com or, my friend Andrew’s favorite, wordie is descriptive. L’Académie française, the organization that cuts out undesirable words from the French language and crusades against the anglicization of français, well, they’re prescriptive. They’re also nonbinding, which sort of points to the inherent problem in being a prescriptive linguist — people probably won’t listen to you.
Back to my point, Merriam-Webster is more descriptive, the American Heritage Dictionary is more prescriptive. So by choosing “w00t,” Merriam-Webster is embracing and calling attention to their whole approach to cataloging the English language.
W00t is an example of l33t (pronounced “leet,” short for “elite”) speak, which, frankly, I think is kind of dumb. There are so many words that already exist in the English language that are interesting and descriptive and beautiful — why not learn how to use those words rather than making up your own?
But Andrew, my connection to all things under-30 and a person who often offers sensible counterpoints to my old-lady reactions, had a good point about l33t-speak: it’s great for passwords.
Now playing: “Stop Breaking Down” the Rolling Stones, “I Let You Go” George Jones and Melba Montgomery, “Bugle Call Rag” Stuff Smith
What’s going on over at MSLO? December 21, 2007
Anyone who has ever asked me where I got the recipe for something knows that I love Martha Stewart Living. I’ve been a subscriber for about five years, and my cooking would be completely undistinguished if I never found Martha.
When Martha went to jail, the big concern was what do you do when a brand is based on one person. (I think that’s a really interesting problem — it’s a similar to the issue discount tire chain Les Schwab faced when Les passed away.) So, as a devoted Martha-phile and a magazine editor, I cheered on Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia during its resurrection, and to be honest, I felt they turned themselves into a better company by focusing on their core strength: putting out great magazines.
I subscribed to Everyday Food, and when Blueprint came out, I thought, “FINALLY! A Martha magazine for me!” After too many boring recipes in Everyday Food (the coq au vin recipe was really good, though), I let my subscription lapse. And although Blueprint never quite delivered on its excellent promise (and premise), I stuck with it for the first two years. They had a change in editors, I liked what they seemed to be trying to do, so I thought it deserved a chance.
But here were my main issues with it:
- the 100 things section was pointless and difficult to read
- they covered the same topic (skin care) TWICE in something like six issues in their Medicine Cabinet department (which, by the way, was a great idea for a department)
- the crafts were lame
- the clothes were ridiculously expensive and unwearable
So when I read the story from Fishbowl that MSLO was shuttering Blueprint, I wasn’t surprised. OK, I was glad. It was a bad magazine — it never felt cohesive, and the editorial voice was snobby. It read like someone I would have avoided in college.
But that’s not where my concern for MSLO ends. Their flagship title, Martha Stewart Living, changed editors recently from editorial director Margaret Roach (who did a great job at the helm while Martha was in prison) to Michael Boodro. Instantly, I started liking Living less.
Why? The Good Things, the department I used to turn to as soon as the new issue arrived, is now filled with Mediocre Things. The recipes have become overly fussy. The October issue, always my favorite, had hardly any Halloween crafts, and even worse, didn’t even have a Halloween-themed cover (the October covers were always great).
And perhaps the worst indication of the new personality of the magazine: the editor’s letters are far too long. (Any magazine editor knows that a ridiculously long editor’s letter usually means that the editor is either a self-absorbed gasbag in love with his own writing or that he can’t meet his own deadlines, so all there’s time for is a quick proof before everyone else scrambles to get the issue off to the printer.)
Michael, we just don’t care about how you got those shots of the cranberry bogs. MS Living readers do want to peak under the hood, but not that hood. Cut the word length in half, point out a few highlights from the magazine, and sign off. But more importantly, get it back to being a magazine I love. The future of my subscription (and my mom’s gift subscription) is in your hands.
Now playing: “The Fallen” Franz Ferdinand, “Your Side of My World” Joe Henry
Follow-up on Consistency December 5, 2007
I just noticed that this WordPress template capitalizes all words in a title in the post, but in the list of recent posts, it lowercases all words in a title. I admire that although it is inconsistent, it’s consistently inconsistent.
